Lexington, KY - Commerce Lexington hosted a Good Morning Bluegrass event on June 29 that featured a panel of newcomers offering their impressions of and insights about Lexington. Each panelist was chosen because in addition to being new to the area, he also represented companies and organizations that have a wide-ranging impact on the region.
The panelists were Rufus Friday, president and publisher of the Lexington Herald-Leader newspaper, who relocated from Washington; Dr. Mark Evers, director of the Markey Cancer Center and professor and vice chair for research at the University of Kentucky Department of Surgery, who moved from Texas; and Bill Farmer, president and CEO of United Way of the Bluegrass, who is originally from North Carolina.
“These are three rock stars that have already had an impact on our community,” saidRobert Quick, president and CEO of Commerce Lexington. “We need to reach out to these new faces that have brought a wealth of information with them and get to know them and plug them in.”
Friday, formerly president and publisher of the Tri-City Herald in eastern Washington state, grew up in Gastonia, NC, and started his career delivering newspapers. He worked in circulation for Gannett for 11 years before joining McClatchy Co.
“When McClatchy purchased the Knight Ridder newspapers, I really had my eye on the Herald-leader,” he said. “I fell in love with it, so it was nice to get the family back home.”
Having only been in Lexington for a year, Friday is still in an observing and analyzing mode. But he has seen and heard enough to assert, “This area is a well-kept secret. It doesn’t really get the recognition that it should.”
Evers had served as a faculty member at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston for more than 18 years prior to moving to Lexington. Though he is a native of Tennessee, the Bluegrass wasn’t foreign to him because he had spent time in Louisville. Coming to Lexington was a return home, he said.
“When the opportunity came to get back close to home and family, I snapped it up,” he said. He likes Lexington’s friendly atmosphere, and so do the 100 team members he brought with him from Texas. Evers said he has found his dream job.
“It’s everything I wanted and more,” he said. “This opportunity was great. We all reach a stage in our careers and our lives where it’s about good business practices. It really comes down to what’s going to be your legacy.” His goal is to put the Markey Cancer Center out of business by reducing Kentucky’s high-ranking cancer rates.
Before moving to Lexington and the top post at United Way, Farmer had been a basketball coach and vice president of corporate development for Time Warner Cable. He helped build a cable system in Denver and was general manager of another cable system in Charleston, WV, where fiber optic technology was first launched. As CEO of Time Warner Cable’s Mississippi and Louisiana operations, he was in the Gulf when Katrina hit. The disaster made him assess what he wanted to do with his life.
“I decided I wanted to spend the last period of my career working in philanthropy,” he said. However, he wanted to move beyond just funding critical and essential services. He had applied for a number of CEO positions across the country but eventually he took his name out of consideration because, he said, many United Way boards of directors only wanted a CEO to tweak the operation; they weren’t looking for systemic change in their community.
“I wanted to address the underlying issues that cause long-term abject poverty,” he said. “When I was working with distressed communities, it was important to know that as a business leader, we had to reinvest in our community. This board here in Central Kentucky said, ‘We wanted to be welded in this community on a long-term basis.’ We now focus on innovation and creativity along with long-term stability.”
Farmer said he appreciates the intellectual capital he’s found in Lexington. “It’s easy to access and to use,” he said. “I have to know more data and analytics and statistics to determine whether or not we’re making a difference.”
In stating the goals of the United Way, Farmer tapped into his fellow panelists’ hopes for the community.
“Our goal is to improve the quality of life for Kentucky,” he said. “There are so many great attributes right here that people don’t recognize. Sometimes it takes somebody brand new coming in and saying, ‘Why can’t we leverage these partnerships and develop this into an extraordinary community?’”